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July 17, 2008
The EPA Gets Sued for Violating the Clean Water Act
Five environmental groups have sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for violating the Clean Water Act by not setting standards for farm and urban water runoff that is polluting the waterways in Florida.
Earthjustice attorney David Guest said that the suit is an effort to get the EPA to implement standards for every state, because most have only vague limits on such pollution.
"This is endemic throughout the United States," Guest said. "When you fertilize the water, it makes it so that only one instrument in the ecological orchestra can play. Where you used to have this vast ecological orchestra, now it's only the algae playing."
He added that the runoff can also contaminate drinking water supplies and sicken or kill people.
"No other life can live there besides the algae," Guest said. "This is about fertilizing water, and when you fertilize water, algae goes crazy and everything else gets pushed out."
The federal lawsuit was filed in Tallahassee by the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida and the St. Johns Riverkeeper.
"It's a priority for EPA to have states adopt science-based numeric standards to control nutrient pollution," EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Benjamin H. Grumbles said in an e-mail Thursday, as reported by the Associated Press and published by the International Herald Tribune.
Posted by Stephen Betheil at July 17, 2008 03:26 PM
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